We Were Kings (33 page)

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Shawmut Avenue, South End

SHEA MACK OWNED
the block on Shawmut and Lenox, and the biggest of the apartment buildings, a grim five-story, was the one he called home. Even though it looked like a derelict tenement, it was the place he ran most of his business. It didn't surprise Dante that these buildings had remained unscathed in the police raids last week—Shea Mack knew a good number of the city's powerful and had fed their guilty pleasures with a discreet professionalism that belied his reputation as a troublemaker.

Dante hadn't been inside this place in years, though occasionally he found himself walking by it with a certain longing for the good old days. There were plenty of glorious times then, and plenty of rotten ones too. At any given moment, there were pimps, dealers, thieves, whores, runaways, gamblers, and crooked cops inhabiting the rooms. And their host, Shea Mack, sadistic as he was, could carry himself with a sense of class and charm, which contributed to his reputation as the royal patron of the gutter. He was an enigma of the underworld; one day you'd see him reciting Yeats and Shakespeare with the dramatic flourish of a well-seasoned thespian as if he were Boston's own Laurence Olivier, but then he'd do something that would turn your stomach, like string up a bad client as if he were a side of beef and carve him up with a sociopath's delight. Shea didn't give two shits about the blood that covered his hands—he knew he could always wash it off. And he never wallowed in the past. The future was his and always would be. Ahead of the curve, he'd say.
If there's money to be made, I'll be the first in line.

Dante had to take a deep breath and focus. The hour he had spent at the orphanage earlier today kept replaying in his head. He stood there in the rank heat of the alleyway, the garbage festering in overstuffed bins, and tried to think about how he was going to make the proposition to Shea.

There was sudden movement from above, and he looked up to the neighboring building. There was a complex latticework of steel ladders and rusted platforms and steps going nowhere. It looked more like an Escher drawing than a fire escape. A man was standing outside at the third-floor level. Dante heard the trickle of water splash on the ground before him, and then realized the guy was taking a piss. He waited until the man zipped up and went back inside, and then he walked farther in until he came to a gated door twined with ivy and weeds. Inside the back lot, there was a small garden, and tomatoes shone in the dusk's light, dark-hued and ripe for picking.

At the back door, he knocked three times. Nobody answered.

He found a crate and propped it under a window, which was covered with a heavy curtain. From behind it came a bright white light that shone through the sides. Dante wondered what the hell was going on that Shea needed a 200-watt light.

When he stepped off the crate, he saw a man standing at the steps with the door half open. “And who the fuck are you?”

The man was thick, with a bodybuilder's girth, ice-blue eyes, and a gold tooth that gleamed when he opened his mouth. “White boy, I asked you, who the fuck are you?”

Dante noticed there was a gun in his hand, but it was by his side.

“I'm Dante. Shea is expecting me.”

“You mean Mr. Mack?”

“I've known Mr. Mack a long time,” Dante said. “I call him Shea.”

“Yeah?”

“I ain't here to start trouble. I've known him so long I remember when he first arrived in Boston and used his real name, the one his mother gave him.”

“And what was that?”

“Oscar.”

The man laughed in a high pitch that contrasted sharply with his imposing bulk. “Bullshit. Oscar?”

“Don't tell him I told you.”

The black man eyed Dante. “Mr. Mack is finishing up something, but come on in.”

They went through a bare hall and another door and entered a large kitchen decked out with modern appliances, each shining brand-new as if it had just left the showroom. The room smelled of jasmine incense and strong reefer. Wearing nothing but silk panties, a woman stood at the stove cooking. At a kitchen table so big it could seat twelve, plates were filled with cheeses and aged meats, and there were glass pitchers of tomato, orange, and grapefruit juice and, beside them, bottles of vodka, gin, and beer. A woman sat at one end, a man's oxford shirt open halfway and exposing the swell of her breasts, the nipples dark and pressing at the fabric. Her ginger hair was done up in rollers, and her face was thick with makeup. A man who looked to be half Asian sat beside her, scribbling notes on a pad of paper, a stick of reefer in one hand and a pen in the other.

The black man still held on to the gun, and with it, he gestured to the hallway off the kitchen.

“Cecil B. DeMille is down the hall.” The black guy grinned, showing that twenty-four-karat flash of gold. “And don't make too much noise. I think they still in action.”

Dante moved down the hallway. A flood of that same bright white light he'd noticed outside poured into the hallway. A high-pitched electrical buzzing came from the room as well.

He shielded his eyes and saw a circular light propped up on a large tripod. Beside it a shirtless man hunched behind a camera, its engine buzzing loudly. It took a few moments for Dante's eyes to adjust so he could see what was being filmed.

The room was empty of furniture besides a couch and a bed. On the bed, a woman was on all fours, wearing a blond Doris Day wig and nothing else. Other than the wig, no part of her bore any resemblance to Doris Day; her eyebrows were thick and black, and she had a long nose and almond-shaped eyes. Her ass was turned up to a naked man pumping behind her. This man wore a black eye mask like Zorro's and his hair was slicked back with grease; a thin mustache was penciled in sharply above his lip. But it was the man on the other side of the bed who got under Dante's skin. His body was so thickly covered with hair, it could have been a coat, and hiding his face was a plastic monkey mask just like the ones worn in
The Wizard of Oz.

“Now suck it again! Don't just kiss it like it's your first time,” Shea commanded just off camera, crouched on one knee, his sharp profile outlined by the high-wattage light. The man really did think he was Cecil B. DeMille—he was wearing a French beret and smoking a cigarette in an ivory holder.

The actress in the wig went at the man and took him in her mouth.

“That's it,” Shea cheered her on. “Now you got it.”

Dante stepped farther into the room. He knew that Shea Mack could never be underestimated when it came to new ventures—the stag film, and a hard-core one at that, had now entered his business repertoire.

The monkey man soon worked himself up to a full frenzy and then came, much to the delight of the director. Shea stood up and barked out, “Absolutely stunning!”

All three actors perspired in the bright light, and an assistant to Shea took a towel and helped clean up the actress, wiping at her face and smearing her makeup, which in the heat of the lamp looked as soft as putty. The cameraman stopped filming and the engine in the camera stammered and then cut off. He reached over and flicked a switch and the stage light's bulb dimmed, its thick coils glowing amber.

Shea caressed the actress's back, then handed her a cigarette and, doing the gentlemanly thing, lit it for her. No longer blinded by the lights, Shea turned around and saw Dante standing there.

“Take twenty, you lovely people. Go eat something. Have a drink. We got one more scene, and then we can gussy up and take to the night.”

Everybody walked out of the room back to the kitchen. Dante lit a cigarette, exhaled smoke through his nose to clear out the stink of sweat and cum.

“Dante, you look like the type that has a big cock. I need a big cock, and this guy I know said he'd do it, but he's on a bender and I'd be surprised if he could get it up halfway with all the powder he's been dosing twenty-four seven.”

Dante smiled. “Shea, it's good to see you too.”

“I'm being serious. The actress is a fine Oriental girl from Shanghai. Gorgeous, I tell you.”

“Not my thing to be in front of the camera, but thanks anyway.”

Shea raised his chin, cocked his head slightly to the right. “Well, I'm bringing Hollywood to little old Boston. It's your loss.” He grinned. His teeth glistened as if he were salivating. “Did you like what you saw?”

“A masterpiece. And with Doris Day, no less. How'd you convince her?”

Shea laughed in that hyena-like way that Dante had never gotten used to. “I know she ain't a dead ringer, but she can suck the green out of an emerald, I tell you.”

“What are you going to call it?”

“Fuck, I don't know. We'll make a hundred copies, probably give it a name like
Three's a Crowd,
print out another hundred and call it something profane like
Her Monkey Lover.
Smut palaces from Fort Lauderdale to Seattle will eat it up. They'll buy both, thinking they're different, and nobody will notice but me and my accountant.”

Shea had lost weight, and his hair was longer, curling at the nape of his neck. Maybe by letting it grow he was trying to compensate for the hairline creeping back from his prominent forehead. “Take a seat and get comfortable.”

Dante sat on the sofa, an old Louis XVI–style piece that had been refurbished with purple velvet. It looked comfortable but once he sat, he felt the springs grind up through the seat.

“Business or pleasure?” Shea asked.

“Business.”

“As I figured. Go on then.”

“Have you heard anything about a shitload of stolen guns?”

Shea laughed again, but this time it was less natural. “What would I do with stolen guns?”

“I guess that's up to you.”

Shea shook his head slowly from side to side. “Don't waste my precious time. I have things of utmost importance to attend to. Playing cowboys and Indians is not one of them.”

“I'm not talking about a few pop guns. Somebody who wants to start a war would gladly pay out big-time.”

“Are you saying I took them?”

“No, I'm not saying you took them. I'm asking you if you want them.”

Shea's jaw tightened as he clamped down on the cigarette holder. “Well, how about that. What's the price? There's always a price.”

“Well, that's for you to set. We just need your help.”

“Who is
we
?”

“Me and my friend Cal.”

“The war hero?”

Dante nodded.

“Well, I guess you and your friend are in over your heads again.” Shea's eyes glimmered, and apparently, in a split second, he completely abandoned his dream of becoming a smut king. “What kind of help do you need, Mr. Dante Cooper?”

At the Pacific Club, Dante fed a nickel into the pay phone. He dialed Cal's office at Pilgrim Security but all he got was a buzzing silence. Not even the operator from the answering service picked up. He reinserted the nickel and called home—maybe Claudia had returned to the apartment. He let the phone ring a dozen times, and then he hung up, took the nickel, and placed it back in his pocket.

He went to the bar, which, on a weekday night, was quiet. Men along the bar kept their voices low, as though concealing their conversations from curious ears. Moody manned the bar and seemed out of sorts. Even the most optimistic types, like Moody, seemed to be souring in the heat. He poured Dante a beer and a Jameson on the rocks, asked if Dante could pay up right away because he was getting ready to head out. The new bartender was on the way and would arrive in a few minutes.

There was no band playing on the stage, just an old piano man, Louie Bierce, working solo.

Dante leaned against the bar, elbows on the curved edge, and listened to Louie hit all the somber notes of “I'll Remember April,” plinking out the ballad as if he were playing the song for his own funeral. At the other end of the bar sat Roland, a dealer who seemed eager to unload his stash. He nodded to Dante, and Dante nodded back.

“Another drink, mister?”

It was a woman's voice. Dante looked up. Moody's cousin Isabelle.

The breath rushed out of him and he managed to say “Yes” and “Please.” She glided over to the rows of bottles, plucked the right one, and poured it into his glass, the muscles of her arms taut as rope.

“I don't know how you drink this stuff,” she said.

“It's an acquired taste, I guess.”

“It must be.”

Dante pulled out a cigarette. His hand was shaking, and the flame bowed and swayed as he tried to light it.

She was looking at him straight on.

“Wanna smoke?” he asked.

“I don't smoke. Never did.”

He searched for something to say. “I heard you're Moody's cousin.”

“That I am.”

Dante's pulse raced like he was a schoolboy at his first social, his palms sweaty and hot. “You tend bar here often?”

She smiled with the radiance of a model hawking toothpaste. Except he'd never seen a colored woman in
Cosmopolitan
or
Redbook
advertising Colgate. “C'mon, you can do better than that.”

“I wasn't trying. Just asking if this is your thing. What you do.”

“It's not what I do but it helps pay the rent.”

“What is it you do?”

She glanced down the bar at the other patrons. Maybe the question was too personal and she was looking for a way out.

“I clean apartments, the homes of people who make more money in a week than I do in a year. And I go to school.”

Dante drained his whiskey. “School for what?”

Again, she looked right at him, seeing him for a fool who asked too many questions. “To be a teacher.”

One of the patrons barked for a refill. She grabbed a clean glass and put it under the tap. Foam hissed but she worked the nozzle just right. Dante noticed she was comfortable behind a bar.